


sweets to the sweet

by ork



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ....for TFA, 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Dating, F/F, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a sickeningly sweet what-if-everything-was-sweet-and-everyone-was-happy au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 02:10:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13537473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ork/pseuds/ork
Summary: Five dates, and one proposal.-Re-uploaded after deleting account.





	sweets to the sweet

The first thing Jessika learns about dating Rey is that it's fun. The second thing she learns is that it is going to require a great deal of patience.

Rey's smile is the sun. Her hands are strong and rough with callouses, and Jess likes to keep one clasped in one of her own as often as possible – she swears one night, appallingly drunk, that she can feel the force between Rey's fingers when she lights up with excitement. Which is a frequent occurrence, and Jess's heart melts every time it happens.

The thing is, Rey's idea of a normal date involves sitting in the dirt, and that's about it. For someone with that much imagination and nineteen years spent alone in which to put that imagination to work, disappointing doesn't even begin to describe it.

“Of course there are different kinds of dates,” Jess says in exasperation, one day not long after their sorta-relationship became an official relationship, sending shock waves through the Resistance social circles and betting pool. (Within half an hour, the odds on Poe saying something to Finn about his giant crush before the week was out went up 500%. Did Jessika formally asking Rey to be her girlfriend have anything to do with the fact she had 120 credits at stake? There was no consensus yet, but anyone was welcome to place their bets on that, too.)

“Really?” Rey scrunches up her nose, like the idea was improbable, or just silly. “How many kinds?”

Jess makes some noises similar to a distressed puffer pig, and realizes she is stuck. She tries to calculate in her head but realizes a) math was just never her thing and b) the variables and categories of what might constitute a “date” throughout the whole of the galaxy is probably incalculable.

“A lot,” she says. “A kriff-ton.”

“Oh, good,” says Rey. “We'll try them all, right?”

And Jessika makes a few more strangled noises and assures her impossible, irresistible, kriffing adorable girlfriend that they will try “as many as we have time for in between everything else” and then they remember that “everything else” means there's a galactic war on and the Knights of Bantha Shit – oops! Knights of Ren – are pretty keen on killing Rey, and it gets kind of awkward and sad.

Until Rey starts kissing Jess on the neck, and Jess remembers why dating this girl is so much fun.

 

* * *

 

“This is a picnic date,” Jess tells Rey, and is immediately bombarded with questions.

“Why are we sitting on a blanket? Why can't we sit on the plants? Is it a picnic date requirement? Where's the food? What do you call a place with grass and flowers like this? Is this a meadow?”

“Gimme a minute,” says Jess, whose head is spinning like she's been in the cockpit for twelve hours. “We're sitting on the blanket so we don't get dirt or plant juice stains on our clothes –”

“I like plant juice stains.”

“You would,” says Jess fondly. “There's lunch in the basket, and yeah, I guess you could call this a meadow. It's more like a field. I think meadows are traditionally prettier.”

Rey clearly does not care about the distinctions between a true bucolic meadow and the shitty little field they're sitting in. Her eyes are fixed on the basket, and truth be told she stopped listening at “lunch”.

A few weeks ago, Finn tried to introduce Rey to the concept of a sandwich, but it didn't really work. As far as Jess can put together, he missed some crucial part about a sturdy framework of bread needing to be involved, because Rey has developed an alarming habit of stacking any and all stackable foods and referring to the resulting mess as a sandwich. (Jess tries not to judge, really she doesn't, but pickled kelp and fried fish with mint sauce between hard cheese and sliced pineapple is...well, it's unorthodox.)

Rey lets Jess feed her bites of food and rest her head on her slim but muscled shoulder, eats wildflowers and more than a few insects, puts flowers in her hair, puts flowers in Jess's hair, sneezes, wraps herself up in the blanket like a jelly roll, tickles Jess and gets an elbow to the face for her efforts, pretends to be an X-wing with accompanying nyoom noises, and finally falls asleep on her back in the sunshine.

Jessika decides it was easily one of the best dates she's ever been on.

 

* * *

 

Curling up together in blankets and watching cheesy holovids in a great idea on paper, but Jess cries like a baby when the scene gets even a tiny bit sad, Rey doesn't like sitting still, and kriffing Dameron's kriffing beep-machine of a droid has this strange habit of pausing the holo to tell Rey about something it saw that day, every fifteen kriffing minutes. And by strange, Jess means kriffing annoying.

Somehow they end up warm, cozy, and sleepily snuggling while a documentary on the Wookiee hairdressing subculture in Coruscant's polar regions plays in the background, and Jess, cocooned in blankets and tangled up with Rey, thinks maybe it's not such an overrated kind of date after all.

 

* * *

 

Fancy upscale restaurant dates are out. There aren't any fancy restaurants nearby, for one thing, Jess is broke, for another, and Rey doesn't have much in the way of nice clothes or table manners.

“Maybe someday, though,” Jess says wistfully to Karé. “When there's. You know. Peace, and all that.”

The night is clear and the stars are very bright, throat-achingly beautiful.

“Yeah,” says Karé. “Peace. Someday.”

But like any good Resistance fighter, Jess knows how to improvise things, and like a good friend, Poe offers to help. Specifically, he offers to dress up and play waiter, with an evil gleam in his eye that promises all kinds of trouble.

They find a little card table that's just the right intimate size for two and spread a red silk cloth over it with the corners hanging down, proper fancy. (It's not actually silk, but it feels silky, and Rey grew up in a scrap heap in the desert – it's not like she's going to know the difference or complain about it.)

Jess rustles up some dainty food and pretty dishes with the meagre pile of credits to her name. Karé offers the use of her collection of soft plinky harp quartet music (after extracting it from between copious quantities of bubblegum pop and Huttese screamo.) And Finn, bless his enormous heart, Finn brings her three real wax candles. They're green (Rey's favourite colour) and smell like coconut (Rey's favourite scent).

“Where'd you get these?” she asks, amazed, grateful.

“Oh, I made them,” he replies, shrugging like it's nothing, and Jess hugs him tight.

She dresses Rey up in the few nice clothes she has, at least the ones she isn't wearing herself, and they do a little waltzing for a minute. Jess rests her head on Rey's shoulder, and Rey whistles a three-four tune between her teeth and steps on Jess's feet.

Karé touches a bit of makeup on each of them (“though I'm afraid all the makeup in the galaxy couldn't fix your face, Testor” “Shut your kriffing mouth or I'll shut it for you”) and Jess offers her arm to Rey and leads her to the empty gear locker that is masquerading for the night as an upper-crust Coruscanti dining establishment.

Rey giggles with excitement as they cross the hangar, and Jess melts again. She thinks they probably look a little silly but to hell with that, Rey deserves everything nice in the galaxy and Jessika Pava is going to give it to her or die trying.

BB-8 is projecting wood panelling and and tasteful artwork (as well as some not-so-tasteful artwork – thanks, Karé) on the stark walls, harp music fills the air, and Finn's candles light the locker with a soft glow.

“Ohhh...”

Rey's little gasp of surprise and delight is the sweetest sound in the galaxy to Jess's ears.

 

* * *

 

Rey has to go on some secret, mysterious Jedi mission to a secret, mysterious planet, and if Jess convinces BB-8 to give her the coordinates of the place that's no one's business but hers. It's some two-bit dirtball with enough crime to scare a veteran criminal and enough sleazy cantinas to scare a veteran sleazy cantina connoisseur, but Force, it is the perfect place to pretend to meet for the first time at a bar and do a little roleplay.

Which is how 'Ryalla' the swaggering bounty hunter seduces 'Tess' the smooth-talking spice merchant into spending a passionate night with her in a hotel room, although perhaps there is a bit more cuddling than is traditional for a casual hookup.

It's great fun for both of them and a pleasant change of scene (although Jess wouldn't say their bedroom activities have ever been boring. Rey, it turns out, was thoroughly experienced with a wide variety of species from her time on Jakku. When circumstances allowed for leisure, “there wasn't anything to do except each other,” as Rey put it. Apparently scavenger orgies were a thing.)

 

* * *

 

The periodic Resistance dance parties are all very well, but Jess wants to take Rey to a proper club. She doesn't get a chance for a long time, until she's sent on a mission and Rey begs Master Skywalker for a few days' vacation to let her go along. (Master Skywalker is fairly easy to convince, but there is a good fifteen minutes of melancholy staring into the distance and reminiscing about “when I was your age” that must be waited through patiently before permission is given.)

“Nal Hutta is a thoroughly disgusting planet,” Jess warns Rey, “but stars, do Hutts know how to party.”

General Organa's message has been safely delivered and a more or less satisfactory reply received, and Jess is climbing out of undercover diplomacy attire and into clubbing clothes – namely, a jumpsuit made entirely of sparkly white straps. Rey is already in a clingy green dress and sits on the bed in their shared guest quarters, swinging her legs and drinking cold Hutt punch, hair slicked back and pulled up high.

“Is it _really_ a party if Snap Wexley isn't there?” says Rey, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Jess has to laugh.

There's live music all night, enough glitter to choke a happabore, sentient disco balls, entirely too much fluorescent paint, and a particularly memorable dance-off between Rey and a portly Mon Calamari. It's a good date, Jess thinks to herself later, muscles rubbery and a sweaty, glittery Rey asleep in her lap. A very good date.

 

* * *

 

And then there's the day when Rey goes away for a long, long time. Jess has a lot to do and tries to distract herself by throwing her heart and soul into the Resistance's cause and playing violent games of holochess with Dameron, but there's a lot of nights she wanders sleepless out of her quarters and winds up sulking in the cockpit of her X-wing, staring at the dark sky and willing the Millennium Falcon to swoop down out of it.

They had one last date before Rey had to go, in the Falcon's cabin, sipping hot protato soup out of vacuum flasks and silently soaking up each other's company, shoulders touching.

“I guess I'll see you whenever you get back, then,” Jess had said, tracing hearts on her knee with one finger.

“If I come back,” Rey had whispered. “alive –”

“Don't say that,” Jess said fiercely, throwing an arm around her and squeezing, “you gotta come back, me and Finn and Poe will _kill_ you if you don't” and Rey had given her a hiccupy little laugh and nodded.

“Bring me back a trophy, okay?” Jess teased, stroking Rey's hair. “A charred boot or a mangled helmet – I'll plant petunias in it –“ Rey laughed again “but a skull would be best. Hey, did you know some species give their intended one a skull as a marriage proposal?”

In the cold X-wing, that day seems far off and dreamlike, and Jess wraps her blanket tighter around her shoulders. Rey will come back. She has to.

She does. She doesn't bring back Jess a skull, but she brings the end of the war and the beginning of whatever else the galaxy has to offer.

And she brings Jess a ring with an enormous pink pearl on it, and whispers the question into Jessika's neck and Jess says “ _Yes”_ and kisses her as well as she can while completely choked up, and Rey gently slips the ring onto her hand, pinned between them where only someone looking up from knee level could see.

And then a certain knee-high droid is tearing around the landing field beep-screaming to anyone that will listen that its second-favourite human is engaged, and Finn whoops and hugs Rey and grins so hard Jess is afraid his face will split and Dameron is crying and thumping her on the back, and they all lived happily the fuck ever after.

 

* * *

 

**Epilogue**

They get married on the beach, Rey in green and Jess in blue, in a double ceremony with Poe and Finn. Leia officiates it, of course, BB-8 short-circuits from excitement, Chewie gives an incredibly long and emotional speech heavily laced with cursing, Luke cries the entire time, and more than a few people catch a glimpse of what they swear could be the bluish, flickering forms of Han Solo and an old bearded man in jedi robes at the back of the crowd. All things considered, it's a beautiful ceremony.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written way back when, in the post-TFA Finnpoe + Reyva heyday. I miss those days.  
> (Although I sure hope my writing has improved since then.)
> 
> Unfortunately, protatoes aren't canon anymore.


End file.
